January 26th, 2004

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Monday, January 26th, 2004

The Nap From Another Dimension

ok that was really weird…

i went to sleep at 3:30 to take a nap.. my mom knew i was going to sleep. i woke up once around 4 and once around 5 when people called, but went straight back to sleep after each call. i woke up at 6:30 and it’s all dark. nobody’s come in and closed the blinds (my family is really really into this) or turned on a bedside light… nobodys come into my room at all for 3 hours, and i’ve been asleep 3 hours. what???

ok, maybe it doesnt sound so weird, but it is! in my house, anyway. i’m usually lucky if i get an hour nap in without being interrupted by a billion people.

i wake up freezing cold. so i got up, turned on my light, closed the blinds, and wandered out into the rest of the house. my mom’s gone, my sister’s not home. confused. the whole house is freezing, and my stepdad’s in the living room talking on the phone and watching tv. no dinner is cooking.

so i return to my room, put on my bathrobe to try and fend off the cold, and sit down to type this.

before i went to sleep i watched the ‘gravedigger’ music video.. so i went to sleep and woke up with it playing in my head. i’ve also had ‘the zephyr song’ by red hot chilli peppers stuck in my head all day, and it was in my dreams, along with gravedigger. i actually ended up rewriting the words to the zephyr song in my dream and singing them constantly. my dreams were very weird but seemed to be repetative and follow some theme. i know i dreamed about doing calculus, making a really good meal with somebody, getting driven to school, singing with a band of strangers, and getting up from my nap and driving my mom and sister to dinner. (food featured prominently, and i felt hungry very often in my dream and when i woke up.. but i’m not hungry now). i also had clips where i was at a house that doesnt exist, but in the dream was placed diagonal across the creek behind my house from me (on what is really butler’s land). it was on a huge hill, and because it’d been really cold lately kids were sliding down the vertical slope of the icy grass. i was with my dad and english family, and we went to the bottom of the hill and watched the kids, then proceeded to an icy lake where i almost fell in numerous times while trying to take a picture with my cameraphone.

so yea.. that was my nap. definitely the strangest nap i’ve ever taken. i’m kind of scared to go out and see if my mom’s.. er.. there yet… i feel very out of the loop and lost as to what’s happening with my family. whoo…. i need to cut down on the drugs… ; P

SOoooo… i spent my weekend in Waco with da HOSA crew from Lamar and Martin, as well as about a thousand other HOSA kids from ‘Area 5,’ the area our HOSA chapter is in.

School trips are fun. i mean, they’re supposed to be. orchestra trips, etc, being with your friends. And hosa is cool, but it really, really needs to take a few tips from band/orchestra. on the band/orchestra trips they know taht the worst thing you can do is leave a bunch of kids sitting around with nothing to do cuz something happened. they know how to keep in touch with each other and quickly make plans and keep things on schedule, making sure that kids never have a second thought to think about boredom. well, for the most part.

anyway, hosa is just a little off from this desired path.

we were supposed to depart at 7:00 on friday morning. we departed at 7:30. this was just people being late and stuff, common for hosa. anwyay, we got to the hotel on time at 9am, so all was good. the hotel didnt have any rooms ready, so we sat in the lobby till 10:30 entertaining ourselves while mrs le and key register us at the competition until, three rooms became ready and we were supposed to leave for lunch, at the same time. so we dump our bags en masse in three rooms and take off to eat. we go to a fancy italian buffet place, where i eat a plate of pure carbs. i find out later we were charged 11$ for this meal… that wasnt worth 11$ at all.

so then we go to some big maison building to watch the opening ceremony. it starts at 1 or something, and lasts a good hour and a half. it’s boring as all hell, consisting of us being told, ‘you’re the future, you’re ugly, dont drop out.’ which, of course, rekindled my desire for life and renewed my scholastic energy. yeeeaaa….. the end was funny, though, because some girl gets up and reminds us of the social we’re all required to attend that night at the ratty high school where this competition is being held. she says what sounds suspicously like, ‘there’ll be food, booze, and lots of games!’ and we laugh.

after this, i get some down time, cuz the voting delegates have got to go vote for the new area officers. there’s only one person running for each office, but in true HOSA style, each person’s speech has to be listened to and each vote has to be counted and recounted. so the rest of us go back to the hotel, and i and two of my three roommates (stephanie a and sheila h, the third was kammi, who was a voting delegate, poor girl) headed up to our room, 310. we upacked and i discovered free high speed net and set up my laptop, and we ate some british chocolate and discussed different cultures (stephanie’s from spain, sheila’s from iran, and i’m from britain) as well as computer stuff (yey!) and obsesity. after a while we go catch ourselves a chaperone and walk to the gas station next door to get candy and junk food. i buy 2lemonsalt (YEY!!!), shocktarts, nerds, and get stephanie to split some wheat thins with me. so far all is goooood.

but alas, at 6 the social time arriveth. we crowd on the bus and go to the school. it’s a nasty place, about the size of shack… but smaller. they’re charging way too much for food, so we dont buy any (though we’re hungry). the chaperone tells us we can leave in 15 minutes, so we sit outside (because there’s way too many people in their cafetorium) in the cold, and talk. the critical debate team arrives back from their competition fuming, and we found out nobody’s even sure if they’re registered. we talk more. the chaperone keeps telling us just a little longer we can leave. the food gets put away. we all get pissed. we’re tired, hungry, and cold. at 9:30 the bus arrives. we board, and get to pick up some quick food (wendys by myself for me) in a little group of fast food places before getting back on the bus. i take a nap while we wait for everyone to board again and we drive – yup – back to the school. we sit more, pick up people. and go back to the hotel. arriving at about 11:00. i’m veerrryy tired.

ali comes to stay in our room cuz there’s some tension in hers, so we’ve got 5 girls sharing a room. it takes a while to organise everything and we end up going to sleep at about 2. it doesnt take me very long to fall asleep. i wake up often, every time someone moves (i’m sharing a bed with ali and kammi), and wake up many times in the morning as each of our seperate alarms go off for us to go to our respective competitions. i rise at 6:15 and quickly dress in my business suit and pack (nobody knows if i’ll get to come back to the hotel before we leave waco, so my roommates might have to take my stuff down for me). i go to the lobby, eat 1.5 bagels and drink two cups of tea, and take off for the lovely competition at 7:15.

we arrive at about 7:45, and i rush to the extemp writing competition, where we start the test at 8:15 due to people being late. the given topic was something along the lines of ‘how do HOSA and the healthcare community work together, and why, and why’s it good,’ etc. but this year they also gave the option of writing on your own topic. so, due to the convo of the previous day, i wrote about obesity in america. it was good fun. at 8:30 a girl came in to take the test. they’re not supposed to let people take the test if they come in late, but they did. she left at 8:45 though, so i wasnt worried. i turned in my paper just a few minutes before time was called at 9:15 and headed down to see if there was any chance of a busload going back to the hotel before the appointed 11:00.

i sat with the critical problem solving team and they told me all about their problems with being registered and stuff. it sucked that they’d been screwed over somehow, and i know it was stressing them out. amazingly, at 10, a busload went back to the hotel, and i got some downtime before we had to check out, which was lovely. then we all boarded the bus, picked up some competitors, and went to El Chico (i think?) to eat. if i it wasnt el chico it was that-type restaurant, you get the idea. i wasnt hungry for mexican, since i’m not texan enough, and so i just had a salad and did my calculus, which made everyone think i was weird. the bus went back and picked up the creative problem solving team and they came and ate. we were there forever.

then we took off to the awards ceremony. but when we got there, we found out it’d been postponded from 1 to 2. WTF!!?!? i was pissed. so i sat on the bus and did more calc. then i took my calc into the awards ceremony at 2 and finally at 2:30 it started. we went through a huge long slide show and watching the officers get replaced via a ceremony that was way too long. finally the awards started. finally it was over. finally we took a long drive home.

on the way home the sun came peeking through the clouds a bit as it set, making the whole world turn yellowish. then a rainbow appeared in the dusky yellow clouds, a complete one, the clearest one i’ve ever seen. it was amazing, and so pretty. i wished i was out of the bus with a real camera so i could take a picture.

supposed to arrive home at 5:30, we pulled into lamar at 8:30. *sigh* then we all quickly went home. and ate. food. damn good stuff.

the good news is, i got first in extemp writing, so that’s really awesome. i’m going to state 1, 2, & 3rd of april.

I am Emma. I am a dual-citizen: half British and half American - but I was born in Norway. I love potatoes and purple. I'm shy, but not. I work on computers, bikes, and DNA, and I play violin. Here is the story of a transplant from Texas to Scotland...